Sun-Hee's POV
The scent of burning sandalwood usually brought me peace, but tonight it was choked out by the metallic tang of blood and the sulfurous stench of fire.
From the shadows of the hidden balcony, I gripped the cold stone railing until my knuckles turned white.
Below, the inner sanctum of the Haneul-Bi palace was a slaughterhouse.
My home, a place of healing and ancient song, was being dismantled by the jagged blades of the Iron Empire.
I did not turn when a frantic movement stirred behind me. I could not. My eyes were locked on the center of the hall where my father stood.
His royal robes, woven with the golden thread of our ancestors, were torn and stained. His crown, the symbol of our people's grace, lay discarded like a piece of refuse on the blood-slicked marble floor.
Standing over him were three generals of the Iron Empire, their armor dull and etched with common sigils. They had the frantic, messy cruelty of scavengers who knew their time at the top was borrowed.
"Princess, we must move before the secondary gates fail," a voice hissed.
"Princess Sun-Hee, please," Min-Ah, my personal courtlady whispered. Her hand was trembling as she tugged at my heavy silk sleeve.
Min-Ah had been my shadow since we were children. We had played in these halls, shared secrets under the blooming plum trees, and prepared for a future that was supposed to be bright.
Now, her face was ghost-white, her eyes wide with a terror that made her look years younger than twenty-one.
Beside her, Commander Joon had his sword drawn. His young face was a mask of rigid, agonizing discipline.
At twenty-seven, he was the finest blade Haneul-Bi had produced in a century, but tonight he looked like a man standing before a tidal wave with nothing but a toothpick. His eyes met mine, pleading. He knew the protocol for a fallen kingdom.
He knew that the light of the royal bloodline was the only thing the enemy truly wanted to extinguish.
A blade flashed in the torchlight below.
I did not scream. The sound died in my throat, replaced by a cold, hollow vacuum as my father fell. My mother's silent collapse followed a second later. The generals laughed, a hollow, grating sound that echoed against the vaulted ceiling.
They were boasting, gloating over the fall of a light they could never hope to understand or replicate. They were erasing my world in the span of a heartbeat.
"They are gone," I whispered. The words felt like shards of glass cutting my tongue. "Joon, the children. We have to get the children out. If they find the younger ones, there will be no one left to remember us."
"The library passage is the only way left," Joon said. His voice was low and urgent, his grip tightening on the hilt of his sword. "The main gates have been breached by the infantry. The Iron Empire is flooding the lower levels with fire. We have minutes, at most."
We moved like ghosts through the servant corridors. I held the hands of my two young cousins, their small palms sweaty and shaking against mine. Every few steps, the youngest would stumble, his breath hitching in a sob that I had to muffle with my palm.
Min-Ah stayed close to my side, her breathing ragged and fast. Joon cleared the corners with the lethal efficiency of a man who had accepted his own death. He checked every doorway, his eyes scanning the flickering shadows for the glint of steel.
As we neared the royal library, the air began to change.
The heat of the palace fires began to recede, replaced by a sudden, unnatural chill that bit through my fine silks. It was not the crisp cold of a winter morning. It was the stagnant, heavy cold of a tomb.
A thick, rhythmic thumping started in the floorboards, a vibration so deep it felt like a heartbeat made of lead. The very stones of the palace seemed to groan in submission.
"Joon?" Min-Ah gasped. She clutched her chest, her knees buckling slightly. "I can't... the air feels like it has turned to stone. I can't breathe."
"Keep moving," Joon growled, though his own footsteps had slowed. His face was beaded with sweat despite the plummeting temperature. "Do not look back. Just get to the library."
We burst into the royal library, a massive circular room filled with the accumulated knowledge of a thousand years. The towering shelves, packed with scrolls and ancient leather-bound tomes, offered a labyrinth of safety, or so I had hoped.
But as we reached the center of the room, the shadows began to detach themselves from the walls.
They did not look like men. They were masses of smoke and jagged edges, manifesting into the shapes of colossal wolves with eyes like burning embers.
They were the Shadow-Wolves.
They were the nightmare of the Iron Empire, the elite force that served only the High General. They did not attack immediately. They simply stood there, blocking every exit, their presence dropping the temperature until our breath misted in the air in thick, white plumes.
"Protect the children!" I commanded, pushing the boys behind a heavy oak desk carved with the sigil of our house.
Joon stepped forward, his blade raised in a defensive stance. He was brave, the bravest man I knew, but against the manifestations of pure shadow, his steel looked pitiful.
A wave of darkness suddenly slammed into him, a physical force that threw him across the room. He hit a bookshelf with a sickening thud, falling to the floor in a heap.
"Joon!" Min-Ah shrieked. She rushed to his side, her hands fluttering over his slumped shoulders, but the wolves ignored them.
The monsters were not interested in the bodyguard or the court lady. Their ember eyes were fixed solely on me.
The smoke at the far end of the library began to coalesce. A figure emerged from the gloom, taller than any man I had ever seen. He was draped in a heavy black cloak that seemed to swallow what little light remained in the room.
Every instinct in my body, every cell that carried the blood of my ancestors, screamed at me to run. I felt like a bird caught in the gaze of a cobra. Instead of fleeing, I reached for the only weapon within reach: a ceremonial silver blade kept in a glass display case near the royal archives.
I smashed the glass with my fist, ignoring the way the shards sliced into my skin. My palm was bleeding, the red staining the silver hilt, as I gripped the weapon. It was light, unbalanced, and never meant for a real fight, but it was all I had.
The figure stepped into the light of the dying fires. I could not see his face clearly through the haze of magic and smoke, but the sheer weight of his power pinned me to the spot.
He was the monster they told stories about to keep children quiet at night. He was the darkness that had haunted our borders for two centuries, a creature of myth and slaughter.
He moved toward me with a slow, predatory grace. Every footfall was silent, yet the floor seemed to tremble beneath his boots.
"Stay back!" I cried. My voice cracked, but I held the blade level. "I am the Princess of Haneul-Bi. You have no right to this sanctum."
He did not stop. He did not even slow down.
As he stepped into my reach, I swung the blade with every ounce of strength I possessed. It was a desperate, clumsy strike, fueled by grief and the absolute certainty that I was about to die.
I expected the sound of steel hitting armor or the resistance of flesh. I expected him to strike me down where I stood.
There was only silence.
The blade stopped inches from his chest. I looked down, my breath catching in my throat. He had caught the edge of the sword between two bare fingers. He did not flinch. He did not even seem to feel the sharp silver biting into his skin, even as a drop of his dark blood welled up and slid down the blade.
I looked up, and my heart stopped.
His face was a sculpture of cold, hard angles. He was beautiful in a way that felt like a threat, his features too perfect and too still. But it was his eyes that truly paralyzed me.
They were glowing, molten amber, deep and ancient, and they seemed to see through my skin, through my bones, and into the very center of my soul.
He leaned down, his face inches from mine. His scent filled my senses, a strange combination of cold rain, old parchment, and something metallic. His voice was a low, gravelly vibration that seemed to echo not in the room, but directly inside my head.
"Drop the steel, Little Light," Kai-Zin whispered. His gaze was unwavering, possessive, and terrifyingly calm. "I have waited two hundred years for this moment. You are the debt I have come to claim, and you are not going anywhere."
I felt the silver blade slip from my numb fingers. It clattered onto the marble floor, the sound echoing like a death knell through the silent library.
Behind me, I could hear Min-Ah's stifled sob and the heavy, ragged breathing of the wounded Commander Joon. The Shadow-Wolves let out a low, synchronized growl that vibrated in my very marrow.
I was no longer a princess. I was a prize.
"What do you want with me?" I managed to whisper, my voice barely audible over the crackling of the distant fires.
Kai-Zin's hand moved, his fingers brushing against my jawline. His skin was unnaturally cold, yet where he touched me, a spark of golden heat flared under my skin, reacting to his darkness.
A slow, dark smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, though his eyes remained as predatory as ever.
"I want exactly what was promised to my bloodline before your ancestors even built these walls," he replied.
He straightened up, his cloak billowing around him like a shroud. "I want the key to my peace. And tonight, Sun-Hee, that key is you."